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Photo of the Week: Planting Seeds for Growth in East Africa

May 31, 2013

Training is critical to help farmers build skills that can lead them out of poverty. Our work in Kenya and Uganda is doing just that.

A TechnoServe business advisor holds a passion fruit seedling during a farmer training session in the highlands of western Kenya. For farmers in the developing world, trainings like these are critical to building skills that will improve the quality of their crops and help fetch higher prices from buyers in the marketplace. It’s a key step to empower impoverished farmers to increase their incomes, paving the way to a better life.

Project Nurture, a partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and TechnoServe, is helping this type of change take root in farming communities across Kenya and Uganda. Through this program, we aim to help more than 50,000 small-scale mango and passion fruit farmers double their fruit incomes. We’re also helping to prove that smallholder farmers can generate meaningful income through fruit production and be competitive suppliers in a market system.

Unable to find employment in his community, Francis Kihara ended up in prison. Watch our video to see how the STRYDE program helped him learn the confidence and skills he needed to start a new business and rebuild his life.